Cons

How I did it

In early May, I was pricing out flights to Germany for this particular week in June and spotted this flight for $2100 USD. SAS flights still earn United miles based on the distance of the flight, not the cost of the ticket, so I earned 13,000 United miles for this flight (versus 6,000 if this ticket had been for a United-operated flight). In addition, I'll earn another 6,000 Chase points for using my Reserve card with the 3x airfare bonus. All told, I earned about $380 worth of points for this flight.

Lounge

The SAS lounge at Newark was decent. There were signs talking about it being expanded in the near future. I'm not a huge lounge person, but here's my lounge wish list (in order of importance):

Not crowded ✅

Free alcohol, spirits, and coffee ✅

Clean, private bathroom ❌ (You had to exit the lounge and use the one in the terminal)

Free, fast Wi-Fi ✅

Food I'd actually eat ✅

Power outlets ✅

Windows ✅

Hot food ❌

Plane-spotting views ❌

EWR Lounge

EWR Lounge

Boarding

Both in Newark and on my flight home from Copenhagen, the gate agents boarded all of the Business Class and Elite status holders in one big stampede. It was a bit chaotic but it was generally fine. Sometimes having 15 boarding groups can be as unmanageable as having 2, I think.

Their new Business Class uses Vantage XL seats and are laid out in a 1-2-1 configuration. An amenity kit, headphones, bedding and water were waiting for me when I arrived. Pre-departure champagne and juice was served.

Our A330

Pre-departure champagne

Fancy new seat

Headphones and controls

Amenity Kit

Service

As this was an overnight flight to Europe, my first priority was to get to sleep as soon as possible. Since I'm a big fan of strategic fasting to prevent jetlag, I ate my "dinner" back in the lounge, at the approximate dinner time in the Central European timezone and then nothing until breakfast time in Europe.

As soon as we hit cruising altitude I switched into my pajamas and went straight to sleep and skipped the dinner service. The quilted seat cover/mattress pad was nice, as were the blanket and pillow. I put on my eye shades and fell right asleep until they started the pre-landing breakfast service.

I went to the lav to change back into my street clothes and noticed the galley had an espresso machine. While still in the galley, I asked the FA if I could get an espresso with my breakfast and hooray! the most important thing about morning arrived a few minutes later.

I bring this up mostly because I've been on several flights where the airline advertises an espresso machine but it's "out of service" once we're onboard. To be fair, I can't imagine being an FA and needing to do a full breakfast service while also making 40 people "double half-caf 180 and rising soy mocha valencias with 3 Splendas*" so I generally do two things: ask for the espresso drink out of earshot of other customers, and ask for a straight-up espresso with no milk products. Whenever I do that, the machine never seems to be broken 😉

While finishing my breakfast I looked through their seat-back entertainment system and found a cool documentary about local craftspeople who made all of the fabrics used onboard the newly-remodeled plane.

My bed

Sweet nectar of the gods!

breakfast

Onboard espresso machine

Landing

Customs at Oslo was quick and easy. Norway is inside the Schengen zone, so my onward flight to Berlin didn't require another trip through customs. Oslo airport doesn't have showers, you have to go off-airport and do a 4-hour hotel room rental if you're feeling stinky.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

From Pokemon to Neko Atsume to shuinchou temple books, Japanese people love obsessively collecting things. They also love trains. The Eki stamp ("station stamp") is where those two things meet. Most Japan Railways stations (including urban metro ones like the Yamanote line) have a unique stamp reflecting that station's history. Kids and train nerds (a.k.a. "Tecchan") buy cute little books to collect the stamps of all the stations they've been to. The USA has a similar program with the national parks.

(UPDATE: on a recent visit to Taipei, I found out that the Taiwanese do this too!) Nerdiness aside, an Eki stamp book makes a great souvenir: it's flat, small, cheap, and light... and shouldn't take but a few moments to do when you're out and about. Special Eki stamp books are usually available at bookstores and stationery stores. Kinokuniya in Shinjuku, for example, has them in their travel section on the basement floor. Because not everyone knows w…

Pros Best in-flight meal everFantastic serviceGreat seat/bedToto Washlet on boardNice departure time (noon Eastern) means a very calm Terminal 7Cons Honestly, none. Other than it's 30,000 more points per person each way than Korean Air First Class, but you get what you pay for...
How I did it
Detailed info is over here, but the short story is: 110,000 United Miles + $5.60 in fees, per person, one way. We earned those miles through a combination of last year's flying on United and one 50,000-point United credit card sign up bonus. We booked around 9 months in advance.
ArrivingWe got stuck trying to do online check-in, but a quick call to ANA got that sorted out. ANA uses Terminal 7 at JFK, along with British, Cathay, and Iceland Air. Since the bulk of British Airways flights happen in the evening, the terminal was basically empty when we arrived at 10:30am.
ANA check-in for all cabins is located to the right of the main hallway. For some reason our TSA Pre information didn'…

Pros:
Awesome food (Ippudo Ramen!)
Toto Washlet in the lavatory Neutrals:
Wifi available but it was expensive and buggy
Nice lie-flat seat but it was oddly lumpy even with the sleeping mat Cons:
No personal air vents

Boarding
We started in the British Airways Galleries lounge. Seems like no matter who I fly with (Iceland Air, Cathay Pacific, British Airways, and now ANA) this is their lounge of choice. It's decent. There's a dining room within the lounge but only One World top tier or people flying on BA First get to use it.
The 777 has ANA's new "staggered Business Class" seats and was configured similarly to the Cathay Pacific 777 I took back in January – Business Class is split in two by a galley area and a door. We sat in the larger rear section. One advantage to sitting in the forward part of Business Class is that you don't have lots of people walking past you during boarding. Headphones, slippers, blanket, pillows, and an amenity kit were waiting for us …